During the creation of my digital story there were certain stages that I went through to complete th efinal product, these involved the intial planning, planning to and taking photographs, recording sound and editing the sound and images to put it together as a digital story.
Initial planning and pitch of the story
When i was thinking about what my story would be about I knew that I wanted something that is personal but something that I could also use as a resource for the future. I decided to interview my Dad about his building career because I saw it as an opportunity to find out a little bit more about his past career. As a child me and my siblings were always having to travel over to Kangaroo Island during school holidays, and even transferring to a school over there for a few months, so that my Dad and with the help from Mum could build this beautiful house. I can now appreciate all of the hard work that has been put into and and happy for the sacrifices that we had to make during the building.
I thought that I might also be able to use this digital story when I begin teaching as a resource when looking at career choices for students.
I put the idea past my Dad and we decided that we would take a trip to Kangaroo Island so that we could do the interview over there and take some quality photographs that could be related to what my Dad would be talking about.
I thought about the sorts of questions that I would ask during the interview and created my interview schedule.
Photography
I decided to take my own photographs to use for the majority of my digital story. In order to do this it meant I had to travel to Kangaroo Island to get some snapshots of the house that is being talked about in the story. This was a great opportunity to bond with my dad and take photos and interview him whilst over on Kangaroo Island - this was a great experience (even though I had been to Kangaroo Island a 'million' times as a child during this building of the house!)
I took a variety of photos around the property including close up shots, mid shots, different angles, establishing shots. I decided to take as many different shots as I liked, that way I would be able to choose which where the best ones. All up I took around 200 photos, and chose 26 of my best shots to include in the story.
I also used a few photos that had been taken by my mum in Queensland and the early construction of the house on Kangaroo Island. The quality of these photographs were not as good as the ones that I tool myself, however I used them because it gave a visualisation of the words that were being spoken.
The photographs needed to match the words in the story. I made the decision to take some photographs before the interview so I could think more about things I could ask during the interview. Following the interview I had a better understanding of how my story would be structured so I took more photos that I needed to include.
Sound
Quality of sound is an important aspect - as i have learnt from my previous assignment. In reflecting on my previous assignment (Radio Cut), I knew that I had to get the sound for my digital story of high quality. I made sure that there were no background noises and had the recording device close to the speaker.
I used my iPhone for recording because after my previous assignment it proved to be the best recording device that I have.
I was very happy with the quality of my sound and didn't have to edit out any background noises which made my editing process much easier.
I decided to add sound effects that related to my story, so I recorded the sound of my dad using an electric saw and hammering.
Editing process
I used two software programs on a Macintosh computer to produce my digital story: Garage Band and iMovie.
Before I even started editing my digital story I knew that I would be able to be more efficient and successful this time arouns, after using garage band for the last assignment. I have also used iMovie several times before so I figured that I would get this part done quite quickly.
Garage Band was used to edit the sound file. Having the experience in using this software for my previous assignment really helped me to use it for this project. After transcribing my interview and highlighting the most important parts I began cutting out the least important parts. I then created the story board to narrow down my choice of audio further.
iMovie was used to put together the photographs and audio to create the digital story. I found it quite simple to use. I incorporated title effects and transitions to enhance the presentation of my story.
The final process was to upload my digital story to Youtube or Teachertube. I decided to try Teachertube first but realised that the format that my video was saved as (Mva4) was not compatible to upload. I then made the choice to re-export my video from iMovie as an avi file so that I could upload it to Teachertube. When it was uploaded and approved I viewed the video and realised that the quality had lowered and was not what I had hoped for. I then decided to try uploading it to Youtube and I found that my previous format was acceptable so I uploaded it to Youtube and then embeded the link into my wikispace.
During the creation of my digital story there were certain stages that I went through to complete th efinal product, these involved the intial planning, planning to and taking photographs, recording sound and editing the sound and images to put it together as a digital story.
Initial planning and pitch of the story
Photography
Sound
Editing process
The final process was to upload my digital story to Youtube or Teachertube. I decided to try Teachertube first but realised that the format that my video was saved as (Mva4) was not compatible to upload. I then made the choice to re-export my video from iMovie as an avi file so that I could upload it to Teachertube. When it was uploaded and approved I viewed the video and realised that the quality had lowered and was not what I had hoped for. I then decided to try uploading it to Youtube and I found that my previous format was acceptable so I uploaded it to Youtube and then embeded the link into my wikispace.